


you've got the touch

by addandsubtract



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-11
Updated: 2010-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur’s powers manifest when he’s thirteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you've got the touch

**Author's Note:**

> superheroes fic! more x-men than superman, though cobb is probably closer to batman in characterization than xavier. I'm a huge nerd. also, the title is definitely from [this](http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mjjx0ymrmjk) 80s song by stan bush from the transformers animated movie. love it.

Eames wipes the blood away from the corner of his mouth. Arthur doesn’t regret punching him at all. He’s got his hands clenched into fists at his sides, but Eames is still grinning. He looks like himself, right now – those wide, pouting lips, and arched eyebrows. Even if he didn’t, Arthur would know him from one brush of skin, and this was more than that.

“Don’t touch me,” Arthur says, the steel in his voice he learned straight from Cobb’s mouth, and he tries to shake off the feeling of Eames’ lips on his. The memories of Eames’ mother’s face, and his first petty theft, and all this information Arthur really, really doesn’t want.

Eames just laughs. He’s in costume, formfitting spandex in deep navy, silver piping. “Sorry, love,” he says. “Won’t do it again.”

He’s lying.

 

Arthur’s powers manifest when he’s thirteen. He’s walking Suzy MacMillan home from school in the hopes that she’ll finally make out with him. It had worked on Matthew Garber, but Suzy’s requiring more attention. She turns to him, standing on her front stoop, and she smiles, blonde bangs falling in her eyes.

“C’mon in,” she says, and reaches out to grab his hand. He feels her skin touch his, and then –

 _\- she’d had toast and jam for breakfast gotten in a fight with her mom in front of the fridge covered in the drawings she’d made in the third grade her mother is swearing the way she always does when she doesn’t know where her father is -_

It’s like being plugged into an electrical socket. Arthur lets go more out of physical instinct than self-preservation and slumps to the ground, trembling all over. He doesn’t remember anything at all after that.

 

“No,” Cobb says. “Again.”

Arthur wipes the sweat off of his face with the back of his arm. He’s in training clothes – a tank top, gym shorts. Cobb’s circling him, and he’s not even breathing heavily yet. Arthur has a long way to go.

“You can do better than this, Arthur,” Cobb says, and Arthur imagines that he can hear disappointment in Cobb’s voice, even though it’s flat and monotone. “ _Think_ , don’t just react.”

Arthur’s still got bruises from yesterday, and the day before. His gloves don’t feel so much like a restriction, anymore, but the tense muscles in his thighs and back do. He wants to be fit. He wants to be ready to go out.

He doesn’t say anything, but he lashes forward with one leg, which Cobb avoids, though not quite as easily as the last.

“Good,” Cobb says. “Again.”

 

When Arthur’s parents pack him away in little boxes, Arthur doesn’t even bother to ask where he’s going. They won’t talk to him. He knows that it’s fear and not anger, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? It makes no practical difference at all.

“Come on, then,” his mother says to the air behind Arthur’s left shoulder. “Time to get a move on.”

Arthur’s sister, Gloria, is peeking out from behind her bedroom door. She waves at him, but doesn’t enter into the hall. Their parents won’t let him touch her.

He waves back, and wonders if he’ll ever see her again.

 

“A to F, are you two in place?” Ariadne’s voice is crackly but recognizable over the comms. Eames glances over at Arthur, and Arthur can feel his gaze linger, but Arthur keeps his eyes on the objective. He doesn’t want to know what Eames face will tell him, and one of them, at least, should be paying attention. Ariadne’s on the east corner, while they take the west. A major deal is supposed to be happening in the building across the street, and they’re pretty sure Cobol is involved. They need visual before they can go in.

“F here,” Eames says. “We’re in position.”

“P?” There is almost discernable concern in Ariadne’s voice. She knows how much he’d rather be with her, right now, than with Eames.

“Here,” he says. “All good.”

“Okay, hold tight. M’s on the ground if we need him, but we shouldn’t. A out.” There’s silence on the line, then, and the job is on. Robert is backup, if things turn sour, but Cobb’s trusted them with this kind of job before and they haven’t let him down yet.

“You don’t trust me, do you,” Eames says, conversationally. He’s crouching down, binoculars trained on the target building. His suit is designed to shift with him, but in any form it hugs his body. Arthur tries not to look at him.

“That depends,” Arthur says, “on what I’m trusting you to do.”

“I don’t care what you get from me,” Eames says, like it’s a continuation of the same conversation. “You can have whatever you want. I don’t want to hide anything.”

“What you’re not seeing, Eames, is that I might not want anything from you.” It’s not, precisely, the truth, but it’s an approximation. “Eyes on the building,” he says. “It’s about to start.”

 

With the door to his room locked, Arthur can strip off his clothes – his shirt, his pants, his _gloves_ – and he can run the tips of his fingers over his belly, and his ribs, and the inside of his thighs and pretend he remembers how it used be. What it felt like to touch someone else and not be bombarded by them. He’ll cup his own face between his palms and think about someone else kissing him, kissing his fingertips, the back of his neck. Sometimes he’ll think about Eames.

It’s not so much that he wants it as he craves it. To know what touch is like when it isn’t an attack.

But then he puts his clothes back on – the slacks, the collared shirt, the vest, the _gloves_ – and unlocks the door, and heads downstairs. Completely put together.

 

“Do it,” Cobb says, and leaves the room. He’ll be watching through the monitors, but he’s left Arthur nominally alone.

The man tied to the chair is a mutant, definitely, but they have to know if he’s working for Cobol. He won’t talk, for which Arthur doesn’t blame him, but they don’t need him to.

Arthur pulls the glove off of his right hand, one finger at a time. He folds it carefully, and slips it into the pocket of his slacks. He doesn’t want to forget it later. Then he reaches out and slides his fingers over the man’s bare cheek.

 _– saw what they did to nash, they cut him up until there wasn’t anything left of him but scraps a finger and an ear and a few locks of hair and then they’d said this is what happens if you don’t –_

Arthur has to close his eyes against the inundation, but his fingers curl up, bite into the man’s cheek.

 _– the flash of the front of the building but no context it doesn’t have a sign but it’s cobol and there’s the fluorescent lighting in the hallways, and there’s the elevator down to the lower levels and there’s nash again, and the pile of intestines and bone and gristle left of him after –_

Arthur barely has time to pull his hand back before he bends and vomits all over the floor, catching his shoes and the legs of the chair the man is tied to. Then he straightens up, wipes off his mouth. He’s trembling all over, carefully breathing in and out, and he can’t get that image out of his head – Nash’s disfigured corpse, the terror that came with it. It’s not his, not his fear, not his memory, but he’s not sure he’ll ever forget it now.

“He works for Cobol,” he says, aloud, his voice raspy and used.

The door opens behind him with a creak, and he’s expecting Cobb. Cobb isn’t fatherly, he’s not warm, but he’s calm and there is nothing more Arthur needs than that.

What he gets is Eames carefully wrapping a hand around his still-clothed wrist. Arthur can think clearly enough to be grateful that he avoided skin-on-skin contact. “Arthur,” he says. “ _Arthur_. Let’s get you out of here, alright? We’ll get you cleaned up.”

For once, Arthur doesn’t care how infuriating Eames is. He just nods and lets Eames lead him out.

 

“How much do you like Eames?” Ariadne asks. It’s a question of degree, which means she’s already figured at least part of it out for herself.

“Does it matter?” he answers back. They’re sitting on her bed, in the room she’s lived in since her parents kicked her out. The students are in class, but she and Arthur aren’t students anymore.

She shrugs at him, but her eyes are sad. She can make people believe they are anywhere, but she can’t change their minds. Arthur’s is made up. “You know he’s not joking,” she says, instead.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

She doesn’t say anything. Arthur’s pretty sure she already knows the answer to her questions. _Too much_.

 

“I’m fine,” Eames says. They’re running. Arthur doesn’t believe him. Eames is slowing down, footfalls farther and farther apart, and Arthur can hear him breathing.

“Stop,” Arthur says, and grabs his bicep with one gloved hand. Arthur’s suit covers him from head to toe – cowl to armored chest plate to pants to steel toed boots. The explosion is over, and they’re far enough away from the fallout that they can probably take a short breather. Cobb is going to kill them.

“Keep moving, I’m fine,” Eames says, his jaw set stubbornly. He’s cradling his left arm against his chest, though, and Arthur can see that his suit is ripped along that shoulder. The fabric is dark with blood, though Arthur can’t tell how much he’s actually still bleeding.

“How bad?” Arthur asks, carefully keeping any concern out of his voice.

“Let’s just get back to the compound, hey?” Eames says. “Nothing a few stitches and a shot of morphine won’t fix.”

Arthur still doesn’t believe him, but he can’t press without sounding like he cares.

 

“Don’t,” Arthur says, again.

Eames puts a hand over Arthur’s heart, warm palm pressed against knit vest and starched cotton shirt. Arthur wonders if Eames can feel his heart beat.

“I’d never hurt you,” Eames says, and the terrible part is, he _means_ it.

“You wouldn’t mean to,” Arthur amends for him. “You’d do it anyway.”

 

Eames is the first person Arthur sees when Cobb leads him inside. His parents have already driven away. He won’t see them again – not unless he seeks them out. And he won’t.

“Well, well,” Eames says, from one of the couches in the common room. He’s smirking, and he’s looking straight at Arthur.

“Eames,” Cobb says, his voice a warning. Eames just grins.

Arthur doesn’t know either of them, yet, but he can guess the subtext. He’s not entirely sure he likes it.

“This way, Arthur,” Cobb says, and Arthur hoists his bag up on his shoulder, following Cobb toward the staircase.

He doesn’t turn when he hears Eames softly repeat his name, somewhere behind them. He doesn’t look.


End file.
